Wonderland

The weather has been unusual, lately. Yesterday, I heard winds howl so loudly that I thought a whole fleet of jumbo jets were falling out of the sky, and I kept on waiting for the sound of their crash, but it never came. I looked outside, and despite the character whistle of the winds, the trees didn't even seem to shiver or sway. I felt like there was a war going on, but I was too blind to notice, all because of some clouds and loud winds. A tornado, a hurricane, no matter how unlikely they are, the thoughts crossed my mind. I kept wondering, "How could a wind be so loud, but not even ever so slightly shake the tallest trees around?" I thought that maybe planes were flying by, and the clouds were just bouncing the sound waves down upon the earth all the louder and from all the farther away. But planes, up in the sky, don't cause the wind to whistle just outside your window, and they don't usually constantly hove or circle around your house, seemingly never to go away.

I have fibromyalgia. Fibromyalgia gets worse in... pretty much any weather that isn't, on all accounts, considered average. Room temperature at normal humidity and pressure, with no clouds in the sky. That seems to be the only time my fibromyalgia doesn't react to the weather. This was a cloudy day, a bit colder, at a lower atmospheric pressure, and perhaps slightly higher humidity. I'm mostly inferring these things, as I haven't even stepped outside in probably three or four days. The effects of weather are very quick. Very sudden. 24 hours ago, I was unusually energetic, and even in a somewhat good mood. For most of the past 24 hours, I've been sleeping away hours, dreamlessly, feeling paralysed and weak. I've been dissociating, as far as I can tell, though I don't have much hands on experience with dissociation. Derealisation and depersonalisation. At first, it started out almost like malaise. A strange feeling that you get - instinctual - that makes you feel like something is wrong, or simply 'off.' But then... it became more. Hours seemed to go by and I hardly noticed, occasionally looking at the clock and just seeing a whole other number to the left of the colon. I saw shows and commercials, I was wary of them, but I quickly found it difficult to really recall what previously happened, or figure out how I got to the point I was presently at. My emotions left me. My nerves turned off. I could dig my nails as deep into my arm as I wanted, and I would hardly feel a thing. I would talk, barely, exasperated and weak, and in a monotone voice, if at all. When people in the house woke up and started to move around, talk, and do things, it was like when you're watching a movie and a crowd of loud teenagers walked into the theatre, acting as though no one else was there, and as though they owned it. I was just a viewer, trying to watch a move - life - and they had come in the middle of it and started to tear it apart and make it difficult to watch. It was like they didn't belong.

I read that, during derealisation and depersonalisation, you're suppose to use your senses more to get a tighter grasp on the solidity and realness of the world around you. You're also not suppose to zone out and get entranced by a singular thought. If anyone's watched the most recent episode of Mad Men, with the stimulant, then you might get an idea of why that was all difficult for me to do while watching it. Perception of time, this odd feeling of things not being real, seemed to just overlap with my feelings, if not confirm them, validate them. I got up, after some time, anyway, and made myself some tea, as well as some heavily seasoned tuna - lots of pepper and garlic salt, in particular. I was up, doing things, trying to use my senses. My sense of touch, sense of motion, sense of sight, sense of taste, sense of smell, sense of temperature... my senses could hardly have been utilised more without dumping the hot tea on myself, and throwing the pepper and garlic salt into my eyes. But it was all so... eerie. Strange. I recall feeling like a character in a TV show or a movie. I didn't feel like it was all completely real, but rather like I was simply supposed to think it was real. I imagined myself being a character on the TV show, Hannibal, and the tuna was actually human meat, but I didn't know that. My lack of knowledge would only sicken the crowd more, due to their secret knowledge which they would be unable to tell me. When I saw the sharp edge of the tuna can sticking up perpendicular to the can, I imagined some antagonist in a horror flick about to shove my face into until the sharp lid was embedded deeply into my skull. But I didn't feel any emotion toward these thoughts. Simply that they seemed strange.

I took a lorazepam (Ativan) to see if it would help at all. Maybe if I dealt with anxieties, even if just pharmacologically, then my body wouldn't need to dissociate in order to escape. It didn't seem to work. The tea I drank had chamomile, velarian, and was a cocktail for calming and soothing the body to sleep. I also didn't know a particular difference. Everything still felt like it was only suppose to seem real, but like it wasn't really. It was like a dream, and I've almost always had cinematic dreams that were incredibly realistic, and not too unlikely. But not long after, my eyes became very, very heavy. I had been up for over 24 hours. Eventually, I couldn't open my eyes, I couldn't even move. I fell asleep, and then woke up. An hour went by. I closed my eyes, and then opened them again. Perhaps an hour or two more went by. Every time I... felt like I blinked, time skipped. Was this sleepless dreaming? Was this what it's like not to dream, and to have the deepest kind of sleep removed from death? Before I knew it, the sun had drastically changed position. It was no longer afternoon, or even evening. The clock said it was past 1:00; I can't recall the minutes. Either I went back in time and the sun blew up, or it was past midnight. I heard my mom talking about me. Saying how I had been sleeping all day, on the couch in the living room, with people coming and going, talking and doing things, but I just slept. She said that the weather changes were probably causing my fibromyalgia to take it all out of me. She couldn't have been more right. I slept for over 12 hours in all, the deepest sleep I had ever slept, and even after waking up at 5:11 in the morning, once and for all, all I wanted to do was go back to sleep. Jaden was coming. He slept on the couch, so I would have to move. I gathered up all my willpower and strength to get up, go to the bathroom after holding it in from virtual paralysis for nearly 20 hours, got some water, some food, and I went downstairs. Jaden came, got the couch to sleep on, and I've been... somewhat awake, somewhat present, since. It's been two hours and twenty-eight minutes, at this point.

Before I became virtually paralysed, I checked my weight. This was then obviously before my marathon of sleep. I've lost 10 pounds in barely over a month, no more than two. 10 pounds. The past month, I've probably eaten less than half of what I normally do. Everyday, my fibromyalgia suppresses my mood, presses down on my body, and I've been depressed for almost every day of the past month. I haven't had an appetite, and my antidepressant doesn't seem to have even the minutest affect. I get anxious over absolutely nothing - literally not even having a thought process associated with anxiety, but simply fearful for no reason. It's like I'd been living upon a mountain peak all this time, and I finally decided to walk deep into the valley below, but I can't find my way back up. I've occasionally thought I found a way, started to climb higher, and then found myself before a dead end with seemingly no detours, so I descended back into the valley to search for another, but I'm starting to feel like there are only ways down, not ways up. This valley is a clearing, with virtually no plants, just short grass, and you can see every corner of the lowland, but no discernible way up. There are no animals, no food. There is just one sad, lost individual, wandering in circles.

Introversion, thinking of one's self and issues obsessively, anxiety... this is supposed to be perhaps the greatest cause of dissociation, but I feel like I get the closest to feeling reality be real again is when I think about these things. When I remember who I am, why I am where I am... how I got here. And yet, my brain is apparently pulling the plug so that I don't think about these things. It's not actually supposed to be a bad defence mechanism, though its side-effects are never, or seldom, desired. It's like turning off a computer so a virus doesn't run rampant on it... but the virus did its job, anyway. Now you can't use your computer, anyway. If you just shut it off to stop the virus, then what are you going to do with it, now? You need to destroy the virus, remove it, not just disable it by disabling yourself. And yet, shut down like this, I haven't felt anxious... I've had some paranoid and unusual thoughts, but I've been unusually not anxious. Sometimes I forget to breathe, or it feels like I can't. Sometimes it seems like my heart doesn't know how fast or slow it's supposed to go, so it just goes through all the different beats until it sounds right. But I don't feel anxious. I don't feel pain, or at least it's much harder to feel it. I almost can't comprehend happiness or sadness, and yet depressing things make me tearful, even if they aren't that emotionally provoking. I feel like I'm irritable in some way, but not as though I would act upon it. It seems like my body is still active, but my mind mostly just turned off. Like a computer that's running without its motherboard, or its operating system, perhaps. And while my thoughts seem to wind and be too slippery to get a hold off, or to be too far into the distance to even really see, they feel so much clearer in the moment. When I focus on something, it becomes really sharp and clear, and I notice more details than ever before, it seems, but everything else is blurry, and when I don't focus on anything, everything is blurry in some way. Words on a computer screen seem to darken and fade as my eyes move, and even a bit while still, as if the ink that printed them bled... but they're just photons, light, absent ink or substance for that matter. They're all a single, solid color, and yet some seem to be clearer, others blurrier, some darker, others more faded. It feels as though my eyes are emboldening certain letters and words, as though they were relevant, but only in my peripheral vision, and they constantly change, so I can't see what's so important... even as I type.

If you took the soul and spirit away from a man, yet still let him live, I feel like I would be him. Memories, data... but nothing really seems to make sense or have purpose. Time is irrelevant, emotions are irrelevant, and even thoughts seem fairly irrelevant. I feel like I'm waiting, but I was never told what I'm waiting for. To wake up? To die? It's hard to tell. And after I think this, the thought will pass, and may or may not be thought again. Also hard to tell. I'm not treading in sociopathy. I'm not remorseless, but I'm currently not remorseful. I don't act in my own interests because I don't act. I'm not selfish because I find it difficult to think about myself, let alone anyone. When I do think of myself, I think in terms of abstractions and thoughts, but am unable to put any real meaning behind it. I'm not mentally healthy or orderly, as there is nothing but disarray and off-shifted thoughts in my head. I do, but I don't, know what reality is. I'm in Wonderland, if only I got there by not moving, and if only this world is Wonderland.

Déjà Vu

These déjà vus are getting more frequent. I used to only get déjà vu every once a while... maybe every other week, or so. But now... it's every day, multiple times a day, and each time I just instantly stop what I was doing and get sucked into it for just a moment... and then the feeling kind of lingers. They're mostly just emotions, senses, but not really pictures or scenes in my head. I mean, the scenes still pop up from time to time, but most of my déjà vu, lately, has been much more like emotions alone. I'll read, see, hear, feel... I'll sense something, and then a flood of emotion pours over me, sometimes nearly compelling me to cry, or outwardly and very clearly react. I'll feel just as I felt some time in the past - sometime I can't clearly recall - and then thirty seconds later, the small crack in the curtains, where I can just barely peek into some past event, gets closed, and I'm cut off. Thirty seconds, sometimes a little longer, sometimes a little shorter, and I simply can't recall the memory at all, but the feelings associated with the memory seem to stick around for some time. Sometimes hours, even, but rarely more than a day.

I keep on wondering, "Is this déjà vu? Are these even really memories, or real memories?" I have had an annoying case of the false memories for years, now, but those are usually just plain ol' 'memories,' faint holographs of events I thought happened, but never actually did. My mind has liked to rewrite history, or insert utterly false events altogether. But these... These have such strong emotions, it's hard to imagine that they're from false memories... It's driving me nuts. I feel like I had major amnesia, and also got brainwashed into believing I lived a whole life up to a certain point that I never even lived! And now I'm at the point in the movie where the main character starts recalling his real past, and realising the past he thought was his past wasn't even real. Now, obviously, I'm not that bad. I have more real memories (when I can access them!) than false ones. The false ones are just typically nuisances... Things that hold little true significance, but that I always seemed to recall. I can typically recall false memories much more easily than real memories. Real memories typically just... come to me. It's not that I can willingly recall them, it just happens whenever the hell it wants to! Usually when I'm trying the least, actually. Usually when I'm distracted or caught up in something, that thing that I'm absorbed into triggers the memory.

You know when you're just having a conversation, and then someone says something that reminds you of something else? It's kind of like that... It just suddenly pops into you're brain, and you're like, "Oh, yeah! I remember that!" Well, that's about the closest normal approximation I can think of for this. This is more like you're soul exists in more than one time, and the you from the present feels what your soul feels from events of the past. It's sort of like that intuition, shared sense, that twins are supposed to have, at least sometimes, but my twin is from the past, and doesn't yet exist, and when it exists now, I'll be in the future. Despite being in two different places on the timeline, I share those senses. That's what it feels like. It's also kind of like on TV shows when a character starts tweaking out because of broken, quick flashbacks where the audio and visuals cut in and out repeatedly. It's not so debilitating, of course, and much less clear... There's a strong vagueness to it. It's about as clear as a room full of smoke in a burning building. But just because you can't see it hardly at all, it doesn't mean the fire won't still burn you and the smoke won't still choke you.

I'm so tired of this crap... Even just one day of complete clarity would be grand, and then I could die, happily remembering what it's like to have any sense of clarity.

Agitated Depression

Agitated Depression... a 'mixed state' in which symptoms of depression and hypomania collide into a volatile mixture... In my experience, nothing good ever really comes of it. But this one... state that I'm going through... feels... like a relief. Like a prisoner who has been starved, beaten, and tortured, and - finally - as he is being lashed, hit, beaten, and sliced... has a glimmer of relief, of joy. He rejoiced because he knows that it's all going to end soon. He'll be free soon... as he bleeds out in the mud and the life fades away from him. In my agitated depressions, everything... intensifies. I'm aware of everything around me, unlike mania (in which I'm often laser focused, and can't seem to pay attention to more than one thing), and... everything, EVERYTHING has some sort of feeling attached. The lifting sun outside bothers me because... it feels like a timer has reached its end and is buzzing, and I'm going over some sort of never-spoken, never-seen time limit. The chair I sit on brings pain, and the keyboard drives me mad with urges that I simply can't deny... Urges for communication and purpose. The screen is a portal, a gateway... It's indiscriminate and can show both the most awful and the greatest of things. The blanket brings comfort and safety with it's weight as it rests on my body and wraps me up. The pillow brings comfort in its softness, even if the comfort is more psychological than physical. Well, those are examples of idle things, at least... Trivial things.

But every emotions, every feeling... even my empathy, it all becomes... magnified, more like through a telescope than a magnifying glass. My brain bursts with sorrow and joy, with elation and despair. When someone else is sad, I'm depressed, and when someone else is happy, I'm joyous. But, most of all, I'm conflicted, even to the point of tearfulness about everything, good or bad. My heart is in a tug-of-war between numerous different forces, different feelings. The chemicals in my brain seem to be pouring and washing over my brain without restraint, without purpose, sometimes mixing and clashing with other chemicals. Sometimes causing paradoxical effects. I see life through a kaleidoscope that changes and fluctuates without ceasing, impossible to grab hold of any one solid image. Everything morphs and changes as if liquid or gaseous. Nothing is solid anymore, and everything is flowing, drifting, swirling, or sloshing. The world, particularly that of my mind, turns into a sea of green liquid metal that will swallow up any poor soul who falls in. It looks so, so cold, but its scolding and burning. The world around just fades into an intoxicating bile-green fog, while the few 'solid' things that can keep you out of the liquid metal are constantly morphing and changing, a maze of pathways where at any moment a hallway can become 10 times the length you thought, or when you thought it turned left, it may suddenly turn right. The inorganic, hard metal flows like a living creature, moving at a whim, shifting and morphing.

The pain amplifies... My head feels like it weighs a hundred pounds and my neck struggles to support it. I just wait for the spine to snap after taking so much strain. My shoulders feel like they've turned to stone, and my back struggles to hold that up. And then.. my poor lower back... taking on the burden of it all - the entirety of the slowly solidifying, petrifying flesh. The knives and needles stab me willy-nilly, the nerves shoot with electricity along their roots, their branches. I feel like I was in a car crash, and then the car flipped into a garbage truck right as it was compacting the garbage. I'm filthy, smashed, and contorted. Oh, my head... It's like someone wrapped an iron band around it and then tightened it more and more until they couldn't tighten it any further, like a belt on a man who denies he's gained a few pounds, and insists on the notch he remembers being able to squeeze into. And this is but a fraction of all I feel... But a minute, almost meaningless, sliver in the grand scheme of things.

I tire... Exhausted and beaten, I envy that prisoner... I envy his escape... He didn't take his own life, he didn't avoid further punishment... He endured it and endured it until... it ended. He was released. He was free.